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Accelerated ruins
Get PDFDiscusses the Canadian photographer Greg Girard's photographic book 'Phantom Shanghai' (2007; col. illus) depicting the contrasts between the old and the new in the cityscape of Shaghai, China. The author describes how economic development has led to the large-scale demolition of old buildings and neighbourhoods to make way for modernist architecture and districts. He considers Girard's documentation of this transition and the conflicting imagery, value systems and lifestyles represented, describing his use of juxtaposition as a strategy to depict the passage of time through the medium of photography, with reference to the ideas of the theorists Gilles Deleuze and Walter Benjamin. He comments on Girard's use of light to evoke aura and compares his work to the photographs taken by the French photographer Eugène Atget of Paris during the early 20th century
Review: of Emergence: Contemporary Photography in Canada
Get PDFIt is for this reason that Emergence: Conte?nporary Photography in Canada is an important contribution to an understanding of Canadian photography. Emergence is smartly structured around a series of essays in which each author writes about three contemporary photo-based artists in relation to the idea of "emergence." In a brief section that follows each essay, the three artists discussed each contribute a short statement about another artist. In total, four essays survey the work of twelve artists, and these twelve artists, in turn, introduce the work of another rwelve artists. In these four essays, the authors present an interpretation of the idea of "emergence," developing a succinct analysis of a set of photographic practices that share a number of common ideas, and which, one assumes, can be described as "emergent." A final, additional essay by Katy McCormick deviates from this model, looking at the work of six former students of photography from Ryerson University, who are represented by a series of small portfolios that appear at the end of the book. In her essay, McCormick focuses on the roles various institutions have had in shaping these artists' work and careers. However, this piece makes it appear that the volume is exclusively about Ryerson alumni. (Indeed, Ryerson graduates are represented to a disproportionate degree in a book that purports to be about contemporary photography in Canada.
Review of David Hoffos [Scenes from the House Dream, Phase Two. Gallery TPW. Toronto]
Get PDFThere are at least two technical antecedents to this work: the phantasmagoric lantern shows of the 18th and igth centuries, which created moving, ghost-like illusions that were often accompanied by sound effects or music; and the 19th-century miniature dioramic tableaux that were viewed through an aperture. Unlike these early forms of parlour entertainment, Scenes from The House Dream reveals how the illusion operates, and in this is the secret of its success. At an earlier show by David Hoffos, Another City, exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2002, audience members actually entered the dioramic space. In the darkened room there was a projection of a couple making out, oblivious to the people around them. The illusion was so convincing that viewers were afraid to disturb them. In Scenes from The House Dream, the illusion is more transparent
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